Walgreens promotes Magnacca to EVP

DEERFIELD, Ill. — Walgreens on Friday promoted Joseph Magnacca to EVP from SVP, effective immediately. Magnacca also retains his title as president of daily living products and solutions.

“Joe plays a critical role in our strategy to step out of the traditional drug store channel and deliver the ‘Well Experience’ to our customers,” stated Greg Wasson, Walgreens president and CEO. “We want that customer experience to be unmatched in the industry, and Joe is helping to bring it to life through leading edge store design, enhanced products and services and increased customer delight. His exceptional strategic market focus means we are now better positioned than ever to meet the daily living needs of our customers.”

Magnacca has been credited by many for helping to transform what the drug store as a shopping channel meant to New Yorkers with Duane Reade and later Walgreens. “Drug, particularly in the United States, was an area that had seen very little advancement over the last several decades, both in the format and the content,” Magnacca told DSN in a candid and wide-ranging discussion on retailing and his vision for store and content development. “Even though at Walgreens, there had been some pretty major advancements, those had been primarily pharmacy-based," he said. “What I saw when I was in Canada was an opportunity … to move away from being primarily a very specific, needs-driven reason to shop and become a place where people want to shop,” Magnacca continued. “Here in the United States, and in Canada, we had become focused mainly on size and replicating the existing model — and doing a great job of it, getting the best corners in America. But even more importantly, it was basically a pharmacy-led model.”

Magnacca's influence on shaping the experience of today's retail pharmacy shopper is perhaps most evident across Walgreens flagship locations, the most recent of which was opened in Los Angeles. There is a big picture thought process behind each of these new flagship iterations. No two are the same. And the only other brightly-colored common thread linking each of the locations — beyond the recurring theme of "local" — is that big picture thought behind each new store — to be customers’ first choice for health and daily living. "It’s about being different from everything else out there in the market; it’s about giving customers every imaginable option for how they could shop your brand, and then imagining a few more; it’s about making customers rethink how they shop the drug store and what they shop it for," wrote editor-in-chief Rob Eder out of that exclusive interview with Walgreens' flagship director Joe Magnacca.

Walgreens operates flagship stores in New York, Las Vegas, Puerto Rico, Chicago and now Los Angeles. One in Boston is scheduled to open in the spring.

To hear first hand Magnacca's transformational vision, click here.

Magnacca oversees Walgreens merchandising and inventory strategy, private brands, insights and analytics, and the New York-based Duane Reade drug store chain, which Walgreens acquired in 2010. A retail industry veteran of more than 20 years, Magnacca joined Duane Reade in 2008 as SVP and chief merchandising officer. He was later promoted to EVP at Duane Reade and then to president of the drug store chain following its acquisition by Walgreens. He was named Walgreens president of daily living products and solutions in 2011.

Earlier in his career, Magnacca served as VP marketing and merchandising for Loblaw, a leading food distributer and provider of general merchandise products and services in Canada, and as EVP merchandising and category management for Shoppers Drug Mart, the largest drug chain in Canada.

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